Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds have become a common way for content sites to publish their content and provide content updates. Users can easily register to those RSS feeds and receive the data, provided in a push mode, into their RSS reader applications. The RSS format is standardized and well-defined, registration is easy, and most importantly, practically all major content providers provide RSS feeds and RSS reader applications free of charge. RSS feeds and other syndication feeds (e.g., Atom Syndication format) are examples for information streams pushed to users.
Despite the obvious benefits of RSS feeds, widespread usage of RSS feeds is not happening. There seems to be two major reasons for that shortfall. Firstly, management of the RSS feeds, i.e., finding an appropriate RSS feed, subscribing to the RSS feed and unsubscribing there from, are time and attention consuming processes which many users prefer to avoid. Secondly, there is an issue with data overload resulting from the RSS feed providing a constant flow of data. Some of the data maybe relevant, while other data maybe less relevant or not relevant at all. For example, being a user of the CNN RSS feed does not mean that the user intends to read every news item on every topic pushed by the CNN's RSS feed. Even if a user is interested in a narrower area, like technology, the user might not be interested in every aspect of technology and wish to have an even narrower feed of content. As a result the user is required to provide more and more information about specific preferences in order to reduce bombardment of data provided through the RSS feed.
There are several solutions provided in the art attempting to overcome certain aspects of the issues discussed above. Typically, solutions focuse on filtering the data as a web service that is provided to the user. For example, BlogRovR fetches, during browsing, posts from a user's preferred blogs about the page being accessed. It enables the display of post summaries that can be open and read without leaving the viewed page. Feed Rinse is another example for a web service that is an easy to use tool that enables automatically filtering out of syndicated content that the user is no interested in. It's like a spam filter for your RSS subscriptions. Yet another example is Feedscrub that acts as a spam filter for RSS feeds. By teaching the system the user's preference a better feed is provided and thereby protection from information overload is achieved. Another web service is provided by My6sense that prioritizes content from RSS feeds received by the user. User preferences, indicating the most important content to the user, are typically provided manually by the user immediately with respect to the content provided. Hence, in such systems there is no need for the user to set preferences in advance but rather, the user gives explicit feedback.
Nevertheless, the prior art solutions do not overcome much of the total burden placed on the user with respect to selection of desired RSS feeds and de-selection there from. Furthermore, existing solutions do not provide content based on changing needs of the user. In view of the limitations of mentioned above, it would be advantageous to provide a system and method thereof that overcome such limitations.